Paul Reynold's Herald Article

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kirjava

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#20321 21-Mar-2008 08:14

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=93&objectid=10499187

Any comments?

"Already over 300,000 of our Wholesale customers in more than a hundred exchanges across the country access the internet using the latest ADSL2+ electronics, supporting peak download speeds of well over 20 Mbps. And while this roll-out proceeds we're testing the next generation of high-speed broadband equipment in our labs, VDSL2."

Is there any way you can find out if your exchange has ADSL2+ equipment installed yet? And I assume they are still only offering standard ADSL services yet, as I have not seen ADSL2+ plans advertised?

Cheers

Rene

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tonyhughes

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#117844 21-Mar-2008 09:58

So much for "ADSL2+ not being intended as a speed upgrade" (Paraphrased from a post about a Telecom rep in another thread.)

Plug an ADSL2+ capable modem into a DSL enabled line on the exchange, and check to see whether you have ADSL2+ :-) Mine is set to use ADSL2+ if available, but sadly, its not.

grant_k

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#117861 21-Mar-2008 11:10

kirjava: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=93&objectid=10499187

Any comments?

I thought this was an excellent article. It was primarily written as a rebuttal to Herald Journo Chris Barton's jaundiced view of Telecom as referenced in the first paragraph. There's no doubt that Paul Reynolds is on a charm offensive and so his rosy view of the situation should be seen in that light, but nonetheless, this is a very different attitude from Telecom compared to what we suffered during the Roderick Deane / TG era.

I was particularly interested to see this:

Anticipating industry needs, we have expressly designed the cabinets to allow for multiple service providers to install their equipment, and we have proposed commercial terms for them to interconnect.
We've been talking to the industry about this progression to a next-generation network for more than a year now.
So "cabinetisation" is not a dirty word. It is simply the next step in the steady march of telecommunications technology.

And this:

Are we blocking access by other communications companies to this world class network? Not a bit of it!
Is this approach different from the rest of the world? You bet it is. In the United States and Germany, where mainly urban fibre networks are being built, the incumbent telcos have received regulatory dispensation from sharing them. Here's more proof that over the past year New Zealand has moved decisively from the back foot to the front foot in the world of fast broadband.

That's a huge change from the anti-competitive Telecom of old.

As always, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, and there will be a lot of detail to be worked through in order for 3rd party ISPs to get their gear into roadside cabinets. The economics of doing so will also need to be addressed:

Does Orcon for example have sufficient customers connected to a given roadside cabinet to make it economic to install their own ISAM inside, and to provision backhaul accordingly?

This will be the acid test and I think in many cases it will make more sense for other ISPs to wholesale these services from Telecom. Having said that, the ability for other ISPs to install their own ISAMs and Backhaul will put a ceiling on what Telecom could justifiably charge for the equivalent wholesale services. In this way, we can be guaranteed that the charges will reflect the actual cost of providing the service, unlike in the olden days where Telecom could charge whatever it liked because they had a monopoly on those services.

All in all, the future of Telecommunications in NZ has never looked brighter. There will always be those who compare us with Korea and the like, where they have fibre to every apartment. But lets think back to the broadband speeds we had on offer prior to the May 06 LLU announcement. And then check back here in a year's time to see how far we've come

ajobbins

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#117916 21-Mar-2008 16:08

We are only a few hundred metres from the Courtney Place exchange (About 700m cable length, 250m stright line) here in Wellington and ADSL2+ has been enabled for a couple of months now.

Sadly our sync speed to the exchange has been falling ever since, from around 20Mbits at launch to around 14Mbits now (And falling). Actual throughput doesn't often get above 8Mbits.

I think you would only be likely to get throughput over 20Mbits if you actually lived IN the exchange. Maybe not even then.

steve98

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#118559 25-Mar-2008 15:06

Am I right in thinking that you will only see the advantage of ADSL2+ speeds if you are on a plan which features an unrestrained upload speed? For example, I am on an exchange which is ADSL2+ enabled (Telecom have confirmed this to me) but my upload speed is limited to 128kbps. I have read that an upload limit of 128kbps effectively 'chokes' the download limit to around 4.2Mbps which is pretty much the exact speed I get.

Does anybody know whether Telecom plan to rid this constraint in the future so that subscribers on the more common plans (for residential use anyway) can enjoy the benefits of these upgrades?

Steve